It's all in the details

[falcon409]

. . .and detail is what I'm losing with my repaints for Tim's T-33. When doing textures for portovers like Tim's T-33 that will only be rendered in a bitmap format, is there any way to preserve high detail from the original layered texture to the final product in the sim?

I made a brand new layered paint kit (38 layers in all) and did the texture in a 4096x4096 size to get the best detail I could to transfer to the final aircraft in the sim. However, it doesn't really seem to make any difference because despite saving it to the texture file as 4096x4096 and saving it in DXTbmp as a 32bit 888, by the time it gets into the sim, it may as well have been done and saved as a normal 1024x1024. The detail is gone and it looks like any other repaint with jagged edges and no way to tell what any of the decals or insignias say.

Any suggestions?

[skyhawka4m]

I think thats part of the problem with doing port over's. I don't think there's much you can do about it either. Personally...I'd lighten the panel lines just a tid bit more.....add a little shadowing, new wheel textures, new pilot helmet textures.....'''Like you said...its in the details....I always said....a nice paintjob can make a nice plane that much better to fly around in. You are doing some very nice work....don't give up.

[falcon409]

This is the first time I've really noticed a marked degradation of the detail from the original to the finished "In Sim" appearance. Probably only because I never paid much attention to it before. With these paints, since I made the effort to build an entirely new paint kit and added details, I was hoping for a crisp texture, but that's not what I got. I looked again this morning at the detail in the paint kit and then the detail after it's saved and brought into DXTbmp. It's obvious from what I see that this is where the detail is lost. . .either in the "save" process or importing into DXTbmp causes a loss of detail which is disheartening to say the least.

I don't know what else to do to preserve the fine details, or if there is anything that can be done when working with bitmap images. I was hoping some of our experienced repainters would drop in and give some options but thus far none have done so. I'll try another thread and see if I can wake them up.

[Bjoern]

FSX.cfg:
TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=xxxx

Default is 1024, highest possible would be 4096.

[falcon409]

FSX.cfg:
TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=xxxx

Default is 1024, highest possible would be 4096.

No, what I'm talking about is the loss of detail from the layered paint kit to the bmp image even before it makes it to the sim.

[Bjoern]

No, what I'm talking about is the loss of detail from the layered paint kit to the bmp image even before it makes it to the sim.

Are we talking Photoshop here or other image editors?

I've had Vitus add a bit more detail to my Dornier's main texture once. He did it in PS with apparently very fine tools (< 1 px in brush size). When I opened the .psd in GIMP I got a blurry mess. Same in FS.
Might be exactly what you're experiencing; that'd make your issue a general PS <-> everything else incompatibility.

[falcon409]

Are we talking Photoshop here or other image editors?

I've had Vitus add a bit more detail to my Dornier's main texture once. He did it in PS with apparently very fine tools (< 1 px in brush size). When I opened the .psd in GIMP I got a blurry mess. Same in FS.
Might be exactly what you're experiencing; that'd make your issue a general PS <-> everything else incompatibility.

I'm using Paint Shop Pro 8 and the layered image in that program saves a *.psp file, but once I save it as a bmp to the aircraft texture folder, that's where it loses detail.

[bruce448]

If you have imagetool.exe that ships with the SDK you can format the files to which ever format you want to (that FSX recognises that is)

(when i use PSP i save the layered files as .PSD's, then convert with imagetool normally to DTX5 format andsave as .dds)

Bruce